What it is
Chronocritters is a worker placement game set on Earth in 2562, after a cataclysm tore apart time and space. An ancient artificial intelligence has been found in a valley, and the players race to help it recover its lost knowledge. The workers are the chronocritters, robot animals: you start with a beaver, an eagle and a monitor lizard, and each of them can level up and work better.
In the middle of the board there’s a disc divided into seasons, which turns every round. The only actions available are those of the present season: to use the ones from the past or the future you have to open a time portal, which stays open for a few rounds and then closes.
The game lasts seven rounds, from spring to winter. Points come from completed missions, docking tiles, the year goals and the final scoring.
How it plays
It’s a very tight game, especially at the start, when you only get three actions per round. Then, by completing missions, one of the possible rewards is an extra action you take right away, on top of the round’s three, and later on you also unlock the fourth worker. From mid-game onwards you get a lot more done, and that’s exactly why the few actions at the start matter so much: they lay the foundations for everything else.
It pays to go for the excavations right from the start too, since they give you passive income for the whole game. And the time portals are essential, because without them you’re stuck with the actions of the current season.
At our table
Beautiful, and we’ll be playing it again soon: one of those tight games where you can do very little at the start, and every move counts.
How long does Chronocritters take?
The box says 80–150 minutes. At our table: 135 minutes at three.
The box
The tightest game on your shelf?
The one where you can barely do anything in the first round.
Also on the table
Thanks to Delicious Games for sending us Chronocritters.